Town and Country; or, life at home and abroad, without and within us eBook

CHAPTER III.

Notwithstanding the short interval between the reception
of the cards and the hour of festivity, the time appointed
saw a goodly number assembled in the well-furnished,
richly-decorated cabins of the ship.

It was evident that some individuals had been busy
as bees, for all was clean and in the best of order.
Wreaths of evergreen and national flags decorated
the vessel, and bouquets of bright and fragrant flowers,
conspicuously arranged, loaded the air with their
sweet perfumes. There were card-tables and cards,
scores of well-filled decanters, and glasses almost
without number. At one end of the cabin stood
a table filled with fruits of the most costly kind.
There were oranges fresh from the land that gave them
growth, and other products of sunny Italy and the
islands beyond the seas. The captain was as lively
as a lark, and as talkative as wit and wine could
make him. He spoke of his quick voyage, praised
his ship till praise seemed too poor to do its duty,
boasted of its good qualities, said there was not
a better craft afloat, and finished his eulogy by
wishing success to all on board, and washing it down
with a glass of Madeira, which, he said, was the stuff,
for he made it himself from grapes on the island.

Messrs. Laneville & Co. were in high glee. They
drank and played cards with men worth millions; spoke
of the inclemency of the season, and expressed great
surprise that so much poverty and wretchedness existed,
with one breath, and with the next extolled the wines
and administered justice to the eatables. Editors
were there who had that morning written long “leaders”
about the oppression of the poor by the rich, and
longer ones about the inconsistencies of their contemporaries,
who ate and drank, and dreamt not of inconsistency
in themselves, though they guided the press with temperance
reins, and harnessed themselves with those who tarried
long at the wine.

James drank quite often, and George as often admonished
him of his danger. But the admonitions of a young
man had but little if any influence, counteracted
as they were by the example of the rich and the great
about him. There was Alderman Zemp, who was a
temperance man in the world, but a wine-drinker in
a ship’s cabin. He had voted for stringent
laws against the sale of liquors, and had had his
name emblazoned on the pages of every professedly temperance
paper as a philanthropist and a righteous man; and
on the pages of every anti-temperance publication,
as a foe to freedom, and an enemy to the rights of
humanity. But he drank; yes, he had asked James
to take a glass of the water of Italy, as he called
it. Clergymen, so called, disgraced themselves,
and gave the scoffers food for merriment. Judges
who that day might have sentenced some unfortunate
to imprisonment for drinking, drank with a gusto equalled
only by lawyers who would talk an hour in court to
prove a man discreditable evidence because he was
known to visit bar-rooms! It was the influence
of these, and such like, that made James drink, and
caused the labor of George to prove all unavailing.
It is the example of the rich that impedes the progress
of temperance,—­they who loll on damask
sofas, sip their iced champagnes and brandies, and
never get “drunk,” though they are sometimes
“indisposed.”